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Olympics: David Morley bags water polo venue for London 2012

David Morley Architects has been appointed to design the temporary water polo venue for the 2012 Olympic Games

The 5,000-seat arena is the firm’s first job on the East London site and one of the last architecture contracts to be awarded by the Olympic Delivery Authority through its design services framework.

The auditorium will sit just to the north of Zaha Hadid’s Aquatic Centre (pictured) and in legacy mode will be removed and the land developed by the Olympic Park Legacy Company.

David Morley, whose London-based practice narrowly missed out on winning the Olympic handball arena, said: ‘The design will be driven by a creative approach to achieving cost effectiveness and buildability. Our ambition is to showcase the best of British technical design and cost-effectively deliver a great arena for sport which can be removed afterwards and where some components can be hired and others also reused.’

Construction will start in spring 2011 with the aim of completing in a year to allow for test events to take place prior to the start of the Games.

Meanwhile, CABE has given its approval to the redesigned cladding at Wilkinson Eyre Architects’ 12,000-capacity temporary basketball arena.

It said the newly-proposed sculpted membrane panels were a ‘considerable improvement on earlier versions’

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